30 July 2011

I know – a weird title.It was meant to be chicken a la king but all the recipes varied that I thought I’ll just use what I have in the fridge instead.After all who follows recipes around here?Not me!

So first I began with making my chicken stock.Big pan of cold water into which I dump the bones from the chicken carcass, I find using uncooked chicken bones to be OK but look at what a real kitchen uses – roasted bones!That is where the flavour comes from and since this was originally a whole chicken roasted that is what went into the pan.

I then just add a bit of salt, pepper, and some garlic and a few other herbs that I like – this is really all down to what you want.What I like you might not – so don’t put it in – put in what you like.I once saw Ina Garten put in a bouillon cube into her chicken pot pie recipe – I thought that was a good idea.So if I know I’m making a big pot of broth I’ll do the same to pump up the chicken flavour.I let this cook for about 45 minutes to an hour.I let the broth cool and then jar it up.I have already shredded the chicken meat and deglazed the pan so the juices are in the same bowl.I have also made some homemade pasta which I froze so that I can make this a quick weekday meal when I come home.All I have to do is make a roux (butter and flour mixture) and add some chicken broth.This batch made 2 quart jars – I’ll probably use the remaining jar for meals at work with any leftover pasta that I froze.I then sautéed some onion, celery, carrot in a pan and then added these to the sauce now.I also added a tin of mushrooms that I had in the larder as well.I boiled a pan of water for the pasta and once that comes to a boil I added my pasta and cook for 3-5 minutes – depending on taste since they were frozen when I put them in – no need to thaw.Serve the chicken and sauce over the pasta and voila a second meal from the initial roast chicken.But all of this meal leaves me with two meals.This one which I used pasta for and the next I’ll serve over rice.The other jar of broth will yield me two meals at work so very economical.So in all I had three main meals from one chicken (it was about 1.75 kilios) and three lunches for work.Not bad.Enjoy!